Paul Chesser

Well, the second-largest banking city in the nation won the rights to host the Democratic National Convention in 2012, so you think the big TARP beneficiaries based in Charlotte might be the ones to step up to guarantee the funds for DNC to do its thing. You know, maybe Bank of America, which is the largest financial institution by assets in the country. Or Wachovia, now Wells Fargo, which has a lot of civic pride and survived thanks to the government intervention.

Environmental pressure group Ceres, whose primary activity is to drive corporations to report their greenhouse gas emitting activities and disclose climate risk in their Securities and Exchange Commission filings, recently released a report that outlines exactly what companies should be disclosing.

The report, “Disclosing Climate Risks and Opportunities in SEC Filings: A Guide for Corporate Executives, Attorneys and Directors,” was written by three environmentalist attorneys and was reviewed by representatives of Friends of the Earth, Climate Change Lawyers Network, Carbon Disclosure Project, Natural Resources Defense Council, Investor Environmental Health Network, California Public Employees’ Retirement System, California State Teachers’ Retirement System, and Environmental Defense Fund, plus other “Green” law firms and investor groups.

Progress Energy CEO Bill Johnson, whose company will (pending approval) be swallowed by larger electric utility Duke Energy, has been making the media rounds. He has discussed the planned merger, which he says is necessary because of looming capital projects that will be needed to meet electricity demand, but he also warned regulators in Washington of the dangers posed by the heightened government regulatory environment:

“Call this regulatory picture what you will – “a train wreck” … “a tsunami” … or an overdue change that’s ultimately do-able,” Johnson said. “It’s not hard to imagine the customer pushback that will occur because of the resulting increase in the price of electricity. This pushback will come from industrial customers struggling to be competitive, and from residential customers and small businesses struggling to make ends meet. As indicated, I’m especially sensitive to the households of modest means, where energy represents a disproportionately large

Earlier this month corporate climateers including Nike and 3M were given awards — supposedly “the equivalent of an Oscar for the climate change mitigation world” — for their efforts to reduce their carbon emissions. The honors were bestowed by the Carbon War Room, which “harnesses the power of entrepreneurs to implement market-driven solutions to climate change.” The Virgin Group’s Richard Branson is one of the nonprofit’s co-founders.

The War Room gave Nike the Gigaton Award for the “consumer discretionary” category. The prize was named for a Clinton Global Initiative project called Gigaton Throwdown, which “encourages companies, entrepreneurs, policy makers, and investors to build big solutions to create climate stability and energy security.” Award winners are chosen by the Gigaton Academy, which consists of alarmist luminaries such as Branson, Ted Turner, UN IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri, Nicholas Stern, and a host of rent-seeking alternative energy industry leaders.

After the failure in Copenhagen last year for countries who hoped for a successor agreement to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming, lower expectations surrounded this year’s version of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Cancun. That’s not the same as saying desires for a massive wealth transfer from developed countries to developing countries was diminished — it’s just that they went about it differently.

One effort was to put pressure on nations to create and finance a Global Climate Fund, and the creation part was successful. As the proceedings commenced, the international poverty-and-justice group Oxfam enlisted several corporations to co-sign a letter to President Obama that demanded the U.S. lead the initiative. The Hill reported:

Companies including Starbucks and Nike say U.S. officials should take the lead in creating a global climate change fund, a move that comes as some Senate Republicans are pressing the State

Urban Partnership Bank, the successor to ShoreBank, late last week hastily withdrew the application it had submitted to state banking regulators to name as one of its directors Donald Beal, owner of Arrow Lumber Co., the South Side firm just barred from doing future business with the city after admitting to defrauding it.

Arrow Lumber is a customer of Urban Partnership Bank, a bank spokesman confirmed. The new lender was financed by a host of Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and formed in August to take over the

The 13th annual global warming alarmism fiesta is well underway in Cancun, but Eric Carlson, president of carbon offset organization Carbonfund (whose corporate partners include Hyundai, Motorola, Volkswagen, Staples, JetBlue, Dell, Virgin America, Avis and Amtrak), wants the United States to just go away:

Carbonfund.org, the leading U.S. nonprofit climate change solutions organization, is calling for the U.S. to stay out of the way of international climate negotiations which began November 29 in Cancun, Mexico. The organization is encouraging participating countries to extend the Kyoto Protocol-set to expire in 2012-or agree on a new emissions reduction treaty without the United States.

“The U.S. has been the 800-pound gorilla in the room at climate negotiations,” (Carlson) said…. “As the largest global emitter per capita with enormous entourages at the meetings, all attention goes toward the U.S. Put simply, the problem is that there are not 67 votes in the U.S. Senate

Taking measure of the new political construct nationally, and of the overall blowback against the global warming movement’s corrupt science and disturbing public relations, you’d think the Environmental Defense Fund’s Fred Krupp would be somewhat humble and conciliatory. Instead he has taken some tips from his union allies in the “Green Jobs” movement and is issuing new threats against businesses who reject climate change environoia, as exhibited in a piece he wrote for the Huffington Post:

We have well-financed enemies in this fight, and it is time to sharpen the nation’s focus on the businesses that obstruct vital progress.

For EDF, that means our historic interest in cooperation over confrontation will be recalibrated. We will always negotiate where possible, and we will continue to look for collaborative opportunities and flexible solutions. That is who we are, and we will continue to pursue those goals.

It’s been a week since the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation swept away ShoreBank’s bad assets (cost: $367.7 million), changed its name to Urban Partnership Bank, and left it largely in the hands of the same people (and investors) who ran it before. Since then there have been several articles that called the process and new arrangement “unusual.” I guess institutions loved by two presidents call for special treatment.

Distinctions need to be made to fully understand what transpired. ShoreBank, the community development lending institution and bank with a presence in Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland, was owned by a holding company: ShoreBank Corporation. The bank failed, but not the holding company, which still oversees some community development nonprofits, an international microlending advisory company, and a bank it co-owns in the Northwest. FDIC announced the parent corporation would continue to operate, but that its “investment in ShoreBank is now worthless.”

Among other things, it looks like the Chicago lobbying to save ShoreBank paid off. Earlier this month I discovered a letter sent by Windy City power player and big Democrat donor Lester McKeever, Jr., to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, which urged his intervention. “It is my hope,” McKeever wrote, “and one shared by others who care deeply about its most vulnerable communities, that the ShoreBank recapitalization plan with investment coming from the U.S. Treasury will enable it to continue servicing its customers and fulfilling its mission.”